So why the fuck did they start to "define" us by confusing us with Demon Hunters and associating us with Illidan? At what point did anyone think "Hey, Illidan looks like a badass! Let's roll a Warlock to be just like him!".

Since WotLK Beta and the introduction of Metamorphosis?

Originally Posted by Kathranis

In my opinion, Demonic Slash needs to become fel-green, too. Illidan's attacks during Metamorphosis in WC3 were ranged, and looked like green energy slashes.

You thought a cloth wearing caster class, defined as a summoner and curser, for whom Night Elves aren't an option, and who are actually incapable of dual wielding anything, would set you on a path to killing things in melee with a pair of warglaives?

I personally just thought the Meta model screamed placeholder since day one. It still does :|

I think there is a reason Blizzard used Metamophosis at the Illidan encounter in BT and than gave it to warlocks some months later. Dont you?

Yeah, it saved them a whole bunch of time and effort. Bear in mind the tech was much less sophisticated then, and it was originally just a DPS cooldown so you never saw that much of it. I'm sure if they were to have implemented it as it works now, and with todays tech, we'd either see race/gender specific models or it'd have visual effects that altered your own model in the sort of ways Dark Apotheosis does.

Slight update with the spell effects for demo, instead of purple glow around your hands at higher levels of fury it is now green.
The swirl and the symbol that appears on the floor are still purple though.

i can't believe people are complaining about metamorphosis being effected by the codex.Heck some are even taking this opportunity to say that "now our class identity is being altered" and that "Meta should have never been in game to begin with". I personally love the newly revamped demonology spec and the new colored metamorphosis and i know others that do, but seeing how it is really pisses some people off(which they have a right to be its all about personal choice) maybe they should make the original color stay through a glyph that way everyone is happy.

as for some people not liking metamorphosis as a warlock ability..well i don't think the color change is gonna help you enjoy meta anymore or any less.

So why the fuck did they start to "define" us by confusing us with Demon Hunters and associating us with Illidan? At what point did anyone think "Hey, Illidan looks like a badass! Let's roll a Warlock to be just like him!".

Because countless people including me would not play the class otherwise. The majority imagines the Warlock as a playable Gul'dan and if the class was exactly like that indeed then I doubt that the Cataclysm percentage would have been higher than 3%.

Don't know why you are so "upset" about comparing Warlocks to Demon Hunters but no class has a too specific identity to go by. Summoner or curser is not enough to define a WoW class. Demonology got a revamp and advanced skills after Illidan, cause it was the only interesting thing to put in that tree. Otherwise, the tree would have been as boring as Beastmaster Hunter is a spec that focuses on pets and does not have any exclusive ability to go by.

i can't believe people are complaining about metamorphosis being effected by the codex.Heck some are even taking this opportunity to say that "now our class identity is being altered" and that "Meta should have never been in game to begin with". I personally love the newly revamped demonology spec and the new colored metamorphosis and i know others that do, but seeing how it is really pisses some people off(which they have a right to be its all about personal choice) maybe they should make the original color stay through a glyph that way everyone is happy.

as for some people not liking metamorphosis as a warlock ability..well i don't think the color change is gonna help you enjoy meta anymore or any less.

I'm not saying that Metamorphosis was a mistake. I am saying picking the Illidan model to represent it was a mistake, and adding the Demon Hunting glyph was an even bigger mistake when they claim they were so worried about class identity; because now we seem to have been given this identity crisis about "are we a caster, or should we be thinking about wearing Agility leather and picking up a pair of Warglaives".

Originally Posted by deviantcultist

Because countless people including me would not play the class otherwise. The majority imagines the Warlock as a playable Gul'dan and if the class was exactly like that indeed then I doubt that the Cataclysm percentage would have been higher than 3%.

Invoking majorities that may or may not exist isn't an argument. I actually think the Warlock class is 'imagined' as it is in the Dungeons and Dragons table top game - as a ranged, cloth wearing, damage dealing, caster class focused on "dark arts" using hexes, curses and powers from the void.

Don't know why you are so "upset" about comparing Warlocks to Demon Hunters but no class has a too specific identity to go by. Summoner or curser is not enough to define a WoW class. Demonology got a revamp and advanced skills after Illidan, cause it was the only interesting thing to put in that tree. Otherwise, the tree would have been as boring as Beastmaster Hunter is a spec that focuses on pets and does not have any exclusive ability to go by.

This is entirely subjective. I actually think Demon Hunters are a great concept, but I really do struggle to see what exactly, other than Meta as an ability, they have to do with Warlocks, and why it is someone felt it necessary to shoe horn them into this class when they're so solid on their own.

The notion of the warlock being pure evil is simply absent-minded stupidity. Warlocks during vanilla and burning crusade were sold towards the greedy arcane mages that delved deeper into the arcane to finally become what we know as warlocks, for pure power. Throughout the quests, you gained individual pets, each with there own quest line to gain, with the doomguard being pinnacle of it (but a gimmick in everything else, and russian roulette). We had a blast in outlands, as alot of the creatures could be enslaved and banished, actually making use of us. But in the end, nothing really changed for us at all, besides demonology getting the felguard. We were still the greedy mages from day one.

Into Wotlk, demonology gained a new, and very controversial ability called metamorphosis. In the early beta, we simply transformed into a Dreadlord. Then it changed to the original demon, i forget his name from the pally mount quest (that telarius voidstrider metamorphs into). And then finally an incantation of illidan, but slightly different, and then finally its current form. We got no lore or anything. We got immolation, and people began to think we were becoming the demon hunters (after they failed to add them in burning crusade). So it was sorta, an unspoken truth from here to cata, that we had taken the most core abilities from the most beloved class, as our own. But, we still did not change from those greedy mages. He had no lore.

Finally, with MoP, we gained lore. With it, we find out, we simply stole Illidan's Metamorphosis, which is why we all transform into a hulking night elf demon, even if you are a woman. We also find out that half of us are greedy and the other half, not so much, which leads to the question, if we are not greedy, then why do we strive to use this power? Well, some might be agents of the Burning Legion, but other could simply be using that magic to pit it against itself.

So, in the end, we really did not learn much else, besides that we are now either the greedy mage (ritzyn) or someone striving to pit fight against fire (in this ideology, jubeka (she wanted people to find her grimores and use them, even if it cost her life), as kanthrend turned out to be on the border of the two.). Yes, we have Illidan's metamorphosis, but only Illidan's. Can they easily make us a demon hunter? Yes. Can they easily make a demon hunter class? Yes. Its like saying destruction is a fire mage.

I actually think the Warlock class is 'imagined' as it is in the Dungeons and Dragons table top game - as a ranged, cloth wearing, damage dealing, caster class focused on "dark arts" using hexes, curses and powers from the void.

I have played DnD myself, sometimes I still do. Warlocks in DnD are 90% void/shadow (eldritch) and 10% anything else. The whole idea about focusing on fel energies and ELEMENTAL fire and having Shadow Priests use the more mature shadow element now that is already distant from the DnD archetype.

So why the fuck did they start to "define" us by confusing us with Demon Hunters and associating us with Illidan? At what point did anyone think "Hey, Illidan looks like a badass! Let's roll a Warlock to be just like him!".

Warlocks have always been about subverting and manipulating the will of Demons to our own ends. Demon Hunters have always been about utilizing Fel magicks to empower themselves. In-game / in-lore, Warlocks learned to supplement their power by learning the Metamorphosis technique from Demon Hunters ... I don't think that one Warlock spec having a (with imo a well-justified in-universe explanation) commonality with Demon Hunters mars or blurs their respective identities at all. In fact I think it speaks volumes to the Warlock identity -- they're seekers and usurpers of esoteric knowledge, and every bit of the new Warlock lore introduced in Cata and MoP drives at this point. Mages have been studying how to gain more power ... we've been plundering the knowledge troves of others to gain more power.

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Slight update with the spell effects for demo, instead of purple glow around your hands at higher levels of fury it is now green.
The swirl and the symbol that appears on the floor are still purple though.

so they are still working on the animations then? If so that's good news because rain of fire looks kinda strange and incinerate needs to be a little more intense. hopefully they are still working on it because i think this is gonna be the last bit of attention warlocks will get for a very long time.

Invoking majorities that may or may not exist isn't an argument. I actually think the Warlock class is 'imagined' as it is in the Dungeons and Dragons table top game - as a ranged, cloth wearing, damage dealing, caster class focused on "dark arts" using hexes, curses and powers from the void.

So just spec Affliction, then. Jesus.

Warlocks in Warcraft have been established as casters who will do whatever it takes to obtain greater power. The whole storyline with the Council of the Black Harvest revolves around this concept. Not only that, but through the storyline, Warlocks have become pretty much the only class that has ever gotten any lore to explain where new abilities have come from.

Metamorphosis was developed by Kanrethad Ebonlocke after the seige of Black Temple, based on Illidan's transformation. He continued to revise the technique, eventually developing Dark Apotheosis, a partial demonic transformation with strong defensive capabilities. He sought to master the demonic powers that warlocks channeled through their bodies.

It bears mentioning that Illidan was always a caster first and foremost, and is chronologically one of the first demonically corrupted mages in the entire Warcraft universe. Though he was never specifically identified as a warlock, you could easily argue that he easily fits the archetype. Particularily in the novels, where the concept of Illidan being a melee-focused "Demon Hunter" was completely nonexistant.

In Warcraft III, Metamorphosis was not a melee ability. Rather, it transformed the Demon Hunter's melee attack into a ranged attack that dealt splash damage. In the RPG, Metamorphosis temporarily raised the user's caster level, allowing them to cast more powerful spells, rather than increasing their melee capabilities.

More importantly, the warlock class now consitutes several different Warcraft classes / units, much like the shaman, hunter, warrior, and even priest. It's not as if the class as a whole is becoming "Demon Hunters." One spec has gotten one transformation ability that, according to lore, was derived from studying the techniques of a demon hunter.

why would the presence of demonic energy on the demon transformation destroy the shadow aspect of warlocks?

Because fel energy is corrupt arcane energy and not void energy and along with green fire applied we have 2/3 specs almost fully fel coloured leaving affliction as the shadowy spec which in fact is worst on that matter compared to shadowpriest. I'm talking about RP/lore, not gameplay.

Because fel energy is corrupt arcane energy and not void energy and along with green fire applied we have 2/3 specs almost fully fel coloured leaving affliction as the shadowy spec which in fact is worst on that matter compared to shadowpriest. I'm talking about RP/lore, not gameplay.

yea, I know.

but let's take a look at what we do know about all those things:

illidan was a mage, an arcanist, who started using fel magic after being empowered by sargeras;

illidan's transformation happened after he absorbed fel energy, a type of arcane energy, from the skull of gul'dan;

kanrethad copied that transformation and created our meta;

if we put all those bits together, we can come to the conclusion that meta is arcane based. normal meta is purple because non-fel arcane is generally purple. meta is not, and never was, a shadow spell. if it were, it'd probably be something like High Astromancer Solarian's transformation.

the questline will alter our "demonic arcane" spells into fel spells. that includes meta, and all fire spells. shadow stuff is untouched. I don't really see an issue here. you have my sympathy for wanting to play something akin to the shadowmage, because those guys are really cool, but that's how things are. blizz just came to the conclusion that not using the pinnacle of demonic magic on our demonic transformation doesn't make sense, and I agree with them.

Warlocks have always been about subverting and manipulating the will of Demons to our own ends. Demon Hunters have always been about utilizing Fel magicks to empower themselves. In-game / in-lore, Warlocks learned to supplement their power by learning the Metamorphosis technique from Demon Hunters ... I don't think that one Warlock spec having a (with imo a well-justified in-universe explanation) commonality with Demon Hunters mars or blurs their respective identities at all. In fact I think it speaks volumes to the Warlock identity -- they're seekers and usurpers of esoteric knowledge, and every bit of the new Warlock lore introduced in Cata and MoP drives at this point. Mages have been studying how to gain more power ... we've been plundering the knowledge troves of others to gain more power.

Originally Posted by Kathranis

So just spec Affliction, then. Jesus.

Warlocks in Warcraft have been established as casters who will do whatever it takes to obtain greater power. The whole storyline with the Council of the Black Harvest revolves around this concept. Not only that, but through the storyline, Warlocks have become pretty much the only class that has ever gotten any lore to explain where new abilities have come from.

Metamorphosis was developed by Kanrethad Ebonlocke after the seige of Black Temple, based on Illidan's transformation. He continued to revise the technique, eventually developing Dark Apotheosis, a partial demonic transformation with strong defensive capabilities. He sought to master the demonic powers that warlocks channeled through their bodies.

It bears mentioning that Illidan was always a caster first and foremost, and is chronologically one of the first demonically corrupted mages in the entire Warcraft universe. Though he was never specifically identified as a warlock, you could easily argue that he easily fits the archetype. Particularily in the novels, where the concept of Illidan being a melee-focused "Demon Hunter" was completely nonexistant.

In Warcraft III, Metamorphosis was not a melee ability. Rather, it transformed the Demon Hunter's melee attack into a ranged attack that dealt splash damage. In the RPG, Metamorphosis temporarily raised the user's caster level, allowing them to cast more powerful spells, rather than increasing their melee capabilities.

More importantly, the warlock class now consitutes several different Warcraft classes / units, much like the shaman, hunter, warrior, and even priest. It's not as if the class as a whole is becoming "Demon Hunters." One spec has gotten one transformation ability that, according to lore, was derived from studying the techniques of a demon hunter.

I'm not disagreeing that we should have Metamorphosis, I am disagreeing with the way that it seems to cause this confusion of overlap with Demon Hunters - when the idea of the changes this expansion were actually to give the class stronger definition to stand on it's own feet as a cloth caster alongside Mages and Shadow Priests.

As for overlapping abilities, sure, Rogues share a lot more overlapping abilities with Demon Hunters than we do - but I guess Rogues are already pretty well defined on their own so people forget that and so they don't cry for a DH spec for them.

I think the animations and the icons especially are a bit on the sloppy side. The green icons were made with one push of a "colorize" button instead of designing them properly. That's why they look so ugly. Compare them to our properly designed "green fire icons" such as fel flame and chaos bolt.

It's pretty much the same thing with the green fire spell animations. I think they look kind of boring being "all green". In addition, some spells are too transparent and some are too thick. If you look at incinerate in the old green fire mod video, it actually has a little bit of other colors in it as well, it's not 100% green. I think that makes it look better. Normal fire spells would look boring if they were all yellow instead of yellow and red. The same applies to green fire in my opinion.

I think green meta was unnecessary and they definitely don't need to turn everything that was purple to green now. There used to be very little green in warlock spells and now some people want everything painted green.

I will be using the old looks after playing around with the green fire for a little while.

As for overlapping abilities, sure, Rogues share a lot more overlapping abilities with Demon Hunters than we do - but I guess Rogues are already pretty well defined on their own so people forget that and so they don't cry for a DH spec for them.

I personally don't see how anyone could see Rogue as a more viable candidate for a DH spec than Warlocks.

Apart from Evasion their toolkit and lore is completely different. They use poisons, stealth, trickery, assassination techniques, positional attacks like backstab and ambush. They have a few magical skills, but they all revolve around shadow.

At a very basic level, they share being agile, dual-wielding melee fighters, but turning them into appropriate Demon Hunters is kind of a stretch. You'd have to ditch a lot of their core abilities and develop a whole new playstyle with lots of new magic- and demon- based abilities.

Demonology Warlocks may not be melee fighters, but their lore and toolkit makes them perfectly suited to represent Demon Hunters. You could easily consider Demonology and Demon Hunting to be two sides of the same coin. Consider that very soon we may see Warlocks once again using their powers and knowledge to fight the Burning Legion, and the line between the two really begins to blur.

With the Glyph of Demon Hunting, the only things Demonology Warlocks really lack are cosmetic. Glaives, shirtless with tats, blindfolds. And, when you consider the Challenge Mode gear, they technically do have access to most of that.

So, if you wanted to split Demonology into two specs, what would that take to properly realize Demon Hunters and also make the two specs relatively unique? Not a whole lot, honestly.

You take Demonology, you maybe rename its version of Metamorphosis to ensure that it has more "caster" personality. You ditch Dark Apotheosis and maybe you grant Demonology Warlocks a Demonic Transformation ability which lets them empower their minions with Demonic Fury instead of themselves -- that way they can choose if they want to transform into demons or not. Maybe ditch Hellfire and Immolation Aura for something like Shadowbolt Volley.

For Demon Hunting, you take Demonology and you keep most of the baseline abilities and mechanics. Probably drop Summon Felguard, replace Hand of Gul'dan with Shadowflame, maybe. You could give them the ability to dual wield (caster swords and daggers), and a weapon enchant, "Demonic Warblade," that would imbue their weapon with demonic power so their melee auto attacks deal some additional spell damage. Demonic Slash becomes baseline but requires a weapon with Demonic Warblade active. Soul Fire is replaced with something like "Soul Slash," a powerful attack that maybe also reduces threat. Void Ray is swapped for Eye Blast, which could work as an interrupt. You get "Diabolical Reflexes" as a passive, which increases your ability to dodge. Twilight Ward becomes "Void Shift," allowing you to avoid incoming melee and ranged attacks for a few seconds.

They get their own version of Metamorphosis as a DPS cooldown, but for melee range. It could maybe transform their Demonic Slash and Soul Slash into Demonic Cleave and Soul Cleave, which would be paired with Immolation Aura for some good AoE damage. Dark Apotheosis would also be a baseline survival / off-tank form, in which perhaps Soul Slash/Cleave raises threat instead of reduces it.

A few tweaks like that (and some time for balancing) is really all it would take.

Anyway, it's not that I wouldn't prefer a fully realized Demon Hunter hero class with three specs and epic questlines and unique tier gear and class vendors in Black Temple that sell you blindfolds and warblades every ten levels... I just think that if Blizzard never goes through with it, Warlocks make a perfectly acceptible framework to incorporate the class into WoW.

Let's be honest, here. Illidan -- the original Demon Hunter, the iconic representation of the class, Demon Hunter Prime -- was a caster. Not a Rogue, not a Warrior. He was essentially a Mage turned Warlock who picked up some melee skill and looted a demon's warglaives in some off-camera eventure, becoming the first Demon Hunter.

So if you're looking at Illidan as the archetypal Demon Hunter, which he is, then Warlock -> Demon Hunter is a perfectly logical step to take.